I've got a friend running a phenom quad core 9850 and a 8800GTS 512 4GB ram. They are not getting super playable frame rates. Resolution is 1280X1024 It hangs around 30 but sometimes will drop down to 20 fps.

I noticed almost no difference running medium spec and running low spec as well as bumping the texture sizes a tad bit.

We also upgraded the CPU from a 9500 to a 9850 recently and there was almost no change in FPS for the game so I doubt it's a CPU bottleneck

What is the cheapest card that will get decent frame rates at that resolution medium spec? Hoping for no drops lower than 40 FPS

My 5670 runs it at that resolution on mostly high settings. I keep shadows at medium and v-sync off. I even have a few things maxed, it looks really good and gets a decent framerate, around 45 most of the time. It's a 1gb GDDR5 version clocked to 850/1050mhz

I'm sure it would run at a solid 60 fps or better on medium settings

I would get a 5770, you can find them almost just as cheap these days and would run it much better than my 5670 I bet

Here, this thing would kick the crap out of my card, and is only like 30 bucks more. But like I said, cheapest would probably be a 5670 like mine that you can OC a lil bit. I got mine for like 75 bucks, but I never intended to game with it... It was just a side effect, LOL

These are about as cheap as you're getting. The $90 Sapphire can overclock, and will run better and faster than the $70 Gigabyte (which I probably wouldn't get), but the Gigabyte will probably do what you're asking at that resolution. But the $110 Powercolor card is TWICE the card as the other two and will probably last you a long while without feeling the need to upgrade.Edited by DizturbedOne - 8/19/11 at 5:48pm